No Use for Moonlight
by roughdiamond5
Summary: And then Jack sees it, right above his signature. "Your friend", crossed out. "Your best friend", crossed out beneath that. Beneath that, the beginnings of "Your bro—" scratched out, lighter than the others. And then finally, a bit further away from the other attempts: Your lover, Crutchie


**I caught feelings from Letter From the Refuge. Why the hell is that not on the soundtrack so I can soak in it? Jeez. Anyway, this is based off a tumblr post that substituted Crutchie's signature of "your brother" with "your lover". And then that marinated in my head for a few days, and the next thing you know, I was taking paid leave from work to go to a cafe and churn this out and then not read it again until a week later. You know. Writer things.**

**I am aware that a couple of other stories have used this line for a title, but I really, really think it's a jackcrutchie line, so I'm gonna use it too.**

Jack opens the letter on an empty bunk, once Specs has left. Crutchie deserves enough that Jack should read whatever he has to say in private. But going to the rooftop, their place, to read it—Crutchie deserves that too, but Jack's trembling too much to climb the ladder.

He reads Crutchie's letter and finds himself torn between laughing and weeping. Crutchie's trying so hard to be brave and support the boys, the strike, _Jack's_ strike—

And then Jack sees it, right above his signature. "Your friend", crossed out. "Your best friend", crossed out beneath that. Beneath that, the beginnings of "Your bro—" scratched out, lighter than the others. And then finally, a bit further away from the other attempts:

_Your lover,  
Crutchie_

The letter shakes in his hands as Jack takes deep, panicking breaths. His eyes are still on the words, but after two or three frantic skimmings, he can't read so well anymore.

_He doesn't really mean…?_

He couldn't, is the thing. Jack knows it for sure. All the playful gestures they trade are just messing around. His arm around Crutchie's shoulder, Crutchie's legs on his lap, all of it is just…what they do. Even on the rooftop—_especially_ on the rooftop—anything they do is for warmth and, on a bad day, for Jack to remind Crutchie that he's special. He's special, and the leg's not always going to hurt, and one day they're going to make it where a bit of clean air will cure them both.

Maybe Crutchie read something into that. Because Jack would be lying if he hadn't _noticed_ Crutchie in the way he noticed girls. The kid was infectious, all sunshine and sarcasm wrapped up in freckles. Jack would be a sucker not to notice, but he'd be _soaked_ to act on it. So he doesn't. But Crutchie's no nitwit, and maybe Jack's not as good an actor as he thought he was.

_Your lover_

But they haven't done anything to be lovers. Jack won't even let his thoughts get that far, let alone his hands, and he never would do anything unless he knew Crutchie wanted it as badly as he does.

_Your lover_

Does he?

Against his will, Jack finds his vision blurring.

Whether Crutchie wants him back isn't really the question anymore.

* * *

He goes back to the Refuge, despite every cell in him screaming not to. His shoulder, not quite healed from his last visit, puts up an especially loud argument. But this isn't about Jack, it's about _Crutchie_, and if Jack wants to know exactly what Crutchie meant by his sign-off, well, that's his business.

Jack keeps his cool until the kid who greets him comes back from the depths of the Refuge, telling him Crutchie doesn't have the strength to come to the window. Without warning Jack pounds his fist against the bars on the window, and the boy startles and backs up a step.

"You tell him from me…" Jack's voice gives out. The kid looks at him warily but with curiosity.

"Yeah?"

"Tell him…" Jack's mind goes blank. He doesn't know how to voice the keening sound his heart makes, to have Crutchie so close and yet unable to be closer, to know that Jack was the one who put him here. To know Crutchie might still, even after all of that—might have _ever_—

_Your lover_

Jack starts his climb down without looking back at the kid. Normally he thinks of exactly what he wants to say once he leaves the place where he would have said it. Today he makes it all the way to the Bowery without the first word.

* * *

David, Katherine, and Les find him painting. It was always his release, the one place apart from the rooftop where he had othing to do except _be_. It's only when David mentions Crutchie's release that Jack listens. Until that moment, Jack would have given up the strike as a lost cause.

Katherine's got a plan about printing their own newspaper, and Jack throws himself into it. She's a smart girl, Katherine, and combined with David's tenacity, they make an unstoppable team. Not that Jack really remembers the details. He won't look at his own illustrations of the Refuge, even as he takes them from the press to the other newsies. He's scared that he'll see Crutchie's face if he looks down. He's terrified that if this fails, Crutchie won't be the only friend he needs to visit. He can only handle the one heartbreak.

Miraculously, Pulitzer gives in. Not on the price of the papers, Jack understands, but he's willing to buy back what they sell, and it's not how things were before, but it's better.

Jack almost, almost forgets to expect Crutchie's return.

He limps through the gates, beaming like they'd only seen each other five minutes ago. "Didja miss me?" he asks the crowd.

And in that moment, Jack can't breathe. The other newsies unequivocally missed him, and they shout as much. Jack missed him too, so much that when he unthinkingly embraces him, he feels like he's finally waking up from a nightmare.

He senses Katherine beside him, though. She's been such an ally, and they've made each other stronger in the little time they knew each other. And he hasn't said he loves her, but she kissed him and he kissed her back, and it was fine. She's on his side, and judging by how she defied her own father to prove it, she's probably expecting more than a kiss for her troubles.

What really settles it, though, is when Crutchie's eyes finally fall on Jack. There's…nothing. No emotion that's been saved for him in particular. Just the same grin he's giving to all the newsies in turn.

_Your lover_

It was a mistake.

In that moment, Jack retreats as if in reflex to his fantasy about Santa Fe. David and Katherine talk him out of it. Jack gives in and, like a consolation prize, he makes good on the same promise Katherine made him. He kisses her, and the other boys hoot and cheer, and Jack forces himself not to listen for Crutchie's voice among them.

Santa Fe's not what he wants. Not if it means he's going alone. It's time to move on from those dreams.

* * *

Moving on is harder than he thinks.

Katherine doesn't and will never live in the lodging house, and her women's tenement doesn't exactly allow for gentlemen callers. Besides, with the strike done, what's there to bind them together? Jack still has to sell his papers, and though Katherine spends any time outside work meeting with the newsies and helping recruit for their union, they end up not having much to talk about. She blends in with the boys so well that Jack almost starts treating her as one of them.

Having Katherine around is a new habit. Having Crutchie around is a broken one. Jack used to never think twice about touching him. (Well, sometimes, whenever Crutchie looked especially angelic or made an especially good joke.) But since the Refuge—the Refuge, it has to be the Refuge that did this—Crutchie's been jumpy and tense, and even when he laughs it off, his anxiety reappears in his nightmares.

That's another thing. With Jack and Crutchie no longer interacting more than necessary, Crutchie has no one to help him onto the rooftop. Crutchie makes the excuse that he got too used to sleeping in close quarters, and he claims a bottom bunk in the main bedroom with the other newsies. But he's right by the window and Jack can hear him just one floor below, whimpering and tossing in his sleep and once, hideously, screaming so loud that Race had to shake him awake while everyone else—Jack included—pretended the sound hadn't disturbed them.

Jack hasn't brought up the letter. He still has it under his pillow, but he doesn't even take it out to read. At this point, he just wants to pretend it doesn't exist. Maybe if the letter doesn't exist, the story behind it won't either.

It's Katherine who finds it.

Jack is showing her his penthouse and had his back turned for one _damn_ moment. Katherine sits on his mattress and leans back on her hands. One of those hands just happens to go under his pillow, and the paper crinkles tellingly.

"What's this?" she asks. It takes Jack two seconds to figure out what she might have found, but in that moment, she's already taken it from its hiding place and opened it and—

"Wait!" Jack barks louder than he meant to. But judging by the size of her eyes, she's skipped straight to the signature and the two words that lead into it.

_Damn reporters_, Jack thinks, almost beside himself.

"Jack…" she says slowly, quietly. Jack strains to figure out her tone, but he's never heard it before. It sounds like how she might talk to a feral, wounded animal. "Does he…" She lifts up the letter. "What did he mean?"

Jack doesn't have to ask which part. He swallows. "I dunno. I never asked him."

Katherine looks back to the letter. "It sounds like something you should ask him."

"It ain't a conversation I know how to have." Jack suddenly feels exhausted. He wants to collapse on his mattress, but Katherine's still sitting on it, and she might think he's contagious. Sometimes in his worse moments, he worries he might be. Maybe liking boys is catching. Or maybe, as is his usual follow-up thought, it's just Crutchie who's catching.

"Then let's practice."

The humorless laugh is pulled out of Jack before he realizes it. "Yeah? This something you support, Plumber?"

"Just try it," she says. Something about Jack's standoffish tone makes her look away from him to some building on the horizon.

"We's doin' fine, or haven't you noticed? And it don't seem so relevant these days." He ventures a step closer and gestures between them.

Katherine nods minutely. She pauses. "Well. If you won't practice with me, then I'll practice with you."

Jack raises an eyebrow. "Be my guest."

Katherine pats the spot beside her on Jack's mattress. Jack falls onto it, but he still keeps a good foot between them. This could be a breakup she's rehearsing. Or a lecture on Jack's morals, to go condoning this disgusting behavior in his borough.

Katherine clears her throat. "Sarah."

"David's sister?"

Katherine glares at him. "You, for the moment. May I continue?"

Jack waves her ahead.

"Every time you visit…and it does feel like you've been visiting a lot …I notice you looking at me. And laughing when I try to make jokes. And I don't think it's because I'm the only other girl." Katherine tries to laugh, but it falls flat. "The last time we had a union meeting, you were…I was a mess after that meeting with my editors, and I felt like I _clearly_ wasn't cut out for a newspaper, let alone a union, and then"—she swallows—"then you had my face in your hands, and you were telling me everything I needed to hear that day. That I'm…amazing, and beautiful, and I deserve every success I've ever had, and things my own _boyfriend_ wouldn't tell me." Katherine reaches a hand halfway between them, as if to suggest to Jack that she doesn't hold it against him.

"And I realized," Katherine continues as she stares at the floor of the rooftop, "that I kind of _want_ you to be looking at me. Because I like to look at you. I want to be your friend, but you feel special in a way that friends…normally don't feel." Finally, she looks up at Jack. "And I really, _really_ don't want to be wrong about this."

Katherine sets her jaw in a way Jack recognizes, when she's decided she's going to be brave. She realizes she's still holding Crutchie's letter and holds it out to him. "I don't want to keep you if you don't want to be kept," she says, and this time Jack knows she's speaking to him.

"Maybe I do," he says defiantly. But he takes the letter.

"Do you? You're not about to run off to Santa Fe the minute I let you go?"

Jack tests out the idea in his mind. Somehow he can't see it, not without someone in the seat beside him. That someone isn't Katherine.

"What if we're wrong about this?" Jack asks. That's his one remaining fear.

"Then at least for one moment, we tried to have it all." Katherine allows herself a small smile. "And even if you don't end up with everything, you're still not getting rid of me."

"I s'pose I should take that seriously, considering you're the only one between us who could buy a ticket outta here."

Katherine shoves him on the arm playfully. Then, more gently, she rests her hand on his forearm. "I'm just saying, Jack. There's someone who could use you a lot more than I could. And maybe you could use him too."

* * *

"Hey Crutch."

Jack tries not to let his voice wobble, but he must not have succeeded. When Crutchie turns from his spot at the street corner to look at him, his eyes hold a tinge of fear.

"Can we talk?" Jack blazes ahead before he can back out.

"Sure, Jack." Crutchie smiles, but it feels off, like so many of his smiles these days. "What's up?"

"Somewhere else."

Crutchie's smile diminishes by half, and he follows Jack without a word. Jack takes what's left of his papers and Crutchie lets him. The habit lingers between them.

Jack leads them into an alleyway and to the foot of a fire escape, and he takes great care to make Crutchie feel like he's not being backed into a wall. Instead he leans against the wall himself, which immediately makes him feel like he's interviewing Crutchie. Which he kind of is.

"So. Uh. Your letter."

The change is slow but stark. Crutchie's face falls into an expression between grieving and panic, and the hand not holding onto his crutch begins to tremble.

"I didn't know if I was gonna make it, Jack," Crutchie says quietly.

"Hey, hey, shh." Jack springs off the wall and runs his hands over Crutchie's arms. It's the first time he's touched him without thinking, like how he used to do. "You were always gonna make it. I ain't ever gonna let anything happen to you, Crutchie."

"I _know_," says Crutchie, but the spite in his tone is less than reassuring. He looks to a trash can lid on the ground beside them. "I know. But I wasn't so sure back then. I was hurt real bad, Jack." He bites his lip. His eyes glue themselves back onto the ground. "And I thought…I thought, what if he never knows? 'Cause for someone so cocky, Jack, you sure got some sorry ideas about yourself. And I ain't never said otherwise."

"Said what?"

"On the ride back to Newsies Square," Crutchie says quietly, "I thought about lyin' to you. I coulda played dumb. 'Lover ain't just for boyfriends,' I coulda said. Or I could have talked about Snyder soaking my head as well as my leg. But then…you didn't ask." Crutchie blinks. "Until now." He frowns. "What are you asking me, Jack? 'Cause I was ready to lie, but I didn't think I'd tell the truth until I was doin' it."

"Crutch," Jack says. His breath is coming out in pants, like he's on the verge of laughter but he can't find the joke. "You ain't _told_ me nothing."

"Well you ain't asked!"

"You think you're my lover, Crutchie?"

The question comes out more accusative than he means it, and Crutchie shrinks away from Jack's grasp. Or tries to. Jack tightens his grip on his arms and keeps him anchored. He wills his feelings to soak into Crutchie through his touch, because he doesn't want to be the one to say it.

But it's _Crutchie_. Crutchie who makes his getting up worth doing and his going to sleep more bearable. Crutchie who has never once doubted him, even when he rolls his eyes. Crutchie who would go to Santa Fe if Jack asked, but who has become so important that Santa Fe doesn't need to be in the picture for Jack to have a home.

Crutchie deserves this much.

"Because if you think you're my lover," Jack says quietly, "you're right."

Crutchie blinks.

"Or…at least I want you to be." Jack bites his lip and looks at Crutchie's. A heated moment passes between them. Crutchie's been jumpy and neither of them have touched the other in weeks, but Jack's not sure there's anything he needs more than Crutchie, in any way he can have him.

For once, Crutchie's lips don't break into a smile. Instead, they reach up to meet Jack's.

Jack wraps his arms around Crutchie's torso and the two of them melt into each other. When they break apart to breathe, they keep only a breath between them.

"You gonna be mine too, then?" Crutchie asks. His grin is delayed, but it's the liveliest—_loveliest_—Jack's seen on him yet.

Jack examines his face for a long moment, and then presses his lips to Crutchie's forehead. This is what he should have done the minute Crutchie was back from the Refuge. This is what he should have been doing this whole time. "For sure."

This time Jack initiates the kiss and learns for the first time in his life—including the strike—what relief tastes like. He'll get Crutchie back up to their penthouse in the sky, he promises himself. It won't be how things were before. But it'll be better.


End file.
